“I’m not just disappearing into the mountains with you. That’s not a plan. And I’m not abandoning my pack. But I’m not letting Aurora put you back in a box, either.” She pulls her jacket around her. Zips it firmly. “So we move. We put enough distance between us and their search grid that I can stabilize you, make contact with Brenna on my terms, and argue for a different approach. One that doesn’t involve straps and locked rooms.”
“Okay.”
She looks at me. “I need you to understand…I’m going back to Ravenclaw. Eventually. And when I do, there are going to be consequences for this. But I’m not going back until I know you’re somewhere they can’t just scoop you up and start over.”
I watch her face. The set of her jaw. The way her hands are steady, even though her voice isn’t entirely.
“You understand?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. We head north. The ridge gives us cover, and there’s water on the other side. We keep moving until we find somewhere defensible.” She glances at my chest. “You should get dressed.”
I pull on my shirt. It’s stiff with dried rain but wearable. She’s already at the door, checking the window.
She opens it. Morning light. Pine air. The mist lifting off the trees.
“Stay close,” she says. “And if you feel the shift coming—”
“I’ll tell you.”
The words come out whole. Both of us notice.
“Good,” she says. “Let’s go.”
She steps out. I follow.
The bird has gone quiet. The helicopter fades to a thin pulse in the distance.
The interval stays with me anyway.
Two notes. A minor third. A sound I answered with my own mouth, not because someone forced it out of me, but because I wanted to hear what would happen.
Rafael.
My name is Rafael.
Chapter 14
Sable
The mountain doesn’t care that I’ve just thrown my career away. It has its own problems. Loose scree on the north-facing slopes, deadfall across the game trails, meltwater cutting channels through the soil that turn solid ground into something that slides. I lead because I’m not the one who just spent years locked in a research facility.
But he keeps up easily.
That should be the first thing I worry about: his bare feet on rock, the cut along his side, the years of sedation and starvation that should have left him weaker than this.
Instead, my thoughts keep sliding backward.
Brenna will have heard by now. The transport team will have radioed in.
I duck under a low branch and hold it for Rafael. He takes it from me, his hand closing over the wood above mine, and follows without speaking. He’s barefoot on rock and rough earth,and he hasn’t complained once. His feet must be torn raw—I caught a glimpse of blood on the stone behind him an hour ago—but his stride is steady, and he’s reading the ground ahead of us with a focus that surprises me. Twice already, he’s put his hand on my arm to stop me before I stepped onto a surface that wasn’t what it looked like. Loose rock disguised by pine needles. A root bridge over a gap that wouldn’t have held my weight.
He sees the terrain like someone who knows it.
“Water,” he says. He’s stopped, his head tilted. Listening. “That way.” He points left, down a gully I would’ve walked past.
“You can hear it?”
